Clockwork
by CouldBeDangerous
Summary: 100 themes prompts: because most people tick the way they do for a reason. Drabbles - no discernible storyline. Part 2: Rivalry. Sherlock learns that blood is thicker than water. To tell the truth? Potential slash ahead but so far unplanned.
1. Cake

**1. Cake**

"Not like that," John huffs, like it should be obvious. Sherlock knows that he's trying to be patient. He can see it in the kind smile lines that form a neat, lacy webbing around John Watson's eyes; they fascinate him, those wrinkles. There are whole _stories_ written there, stories that Sherlock will never be able to read because they're not in any known language. They are in the language of John, which is the least decipherable he's come across yet.

"Sherlock," John says.

Sherlock looks dispassionately down at the mess they've made on the counter: cacao powder sprinkled hither and thither; a smear of whipped egg white; bits of shell everywhere; and a bowl full of what seems to be clumps of flour floating in some sort of batter.

"What would you _have me do_, John?" He doesn't mean for it to come out as a whine, but it does. He wipes his sticky fingers on his apron (John's insistence. Something about not wanting to spoil a perfectly lovely clean shirt. God, but he feels ridiculous). He's not sure why they're doing this in the first place.

_I am making a birthday cake_, he says to himself, watching his fingers leave chocolate prints on Mrs Hudson's purple apron. _I am making a birthday cake for Gregory Lestrade, and John is helping me._ He's never felt stranger.

Still smiling resolutely, though Sherlock's positive there's a hint of a strain at the edges, just _there_, John pulls the glass bowl to himself and gently removes the spoon from Sherlock's hand. Slowly, steadily, God, so _patiently_, John begins to whip the cake batter with long, even strokes, until all the flour dissipates evenly into the eggs and butter and cream. Sherlock watches the process carefully. Mummy never cooked. Nor had Mycroft. It had never seemed like something he needed to learn how to do.

"– this is so hard for you," John was saying.

Sherlock concentrated on the sound of John's voice, not on the batter. John was more important than cake.

"I mean, how many hours a day do you spend mixing volatile substances? Surely, this can't be all that different?"

But it is different. Chemicals and explosive things at Saint Bart's – that, Sherlock knows how to deal with. It's a simple matter of finding the right mix, and then it becomes a matter of life and death. He's good at it. It's what he's always done, and what he'll always do. Birthday cakes are a completely different matter. He's not sure he's ever been to a real birthday celebration before, not counting when he used to hide under the table at Mycroft's parties and try to match the voices of the guests to their shoes and pant legs. That had stopped when he was seven and Mycroft had kicked him out.

Sherlock can't explain this to John, but there is an _art_ to cooking, a sort of finesse. In theory, cooking and chemistry strongly resemble each other: delicate combinations, a watchful eye, endless patience and clock-watching until the final goal is achieved. But in practice, they're nothing alike. No one will frown at you if you use too much permanganate or sodium chloride, but when there's someone to be let down if you ruin the cake?

Doesn't John understand the significance of _cake_, and what happens if you ruin it?

What if Anderson takes a bite and laughs at him?

What if Anderson tastes it at all?

What if Lestrade hates it?

So Sherlock doesn't say anything. He watches the batter turn smooth and evenly coloured under John's expert handling, and is tremendously grateful to have a John Watson in his life.

A year ago, he'd turned down this invitation.

"Get me the pan, please." John is looking at him thoughtfully, and he's really not the master of subtly. That's probably alright. What John lacks in discretion, Sherlock can more than account for the two of them.

"Anderson is invited tonight, and you _are _being polite."

Likewise, what Sherlock lacks in tact, John makes up for with impeccable manners. People would think _John _was the one with the illustrious upbringing, not Sherlock.

Sherlock passes John the cake pan, and the good doctor spreads the batter evenly. They put the pan in the oven together and Sherlock sets the timer, because this he _does_ know how to do. Precision. The recipe says ten minutes, but he's calculated: due to their particular brand of flour (what Mrs Hudson had on the shelf, actually, because they don't have much in the way of baking goods sitting around the flat. John's too afraid of finding horrid things in the sugar bowl, or some such trite nonsense. As if Sherlock would poison the sugar bowl. He _likes_ sugar) and a slight difference in egg size, the cake will take nine minutes and twenty-three seconds.

"I'll clean up if you like," Sherlock hears himself saying. The flour in John's hair makes him look prematurely like he's on the cusp of his early sixties (John's father went grey at fifty-nine, judging on the pictures), and his fingers gleam faintly with still-lingering remnants of butter. "You can take a shower before we go."

Mostly, it's for selfish reasons. If the idea of attending a birthday party makes his insides knot unpleasantly, he's not let John know, and he sees no reason why John should think him a blubbering mess. But John shoots him such a brilliant smile that he realizes the other has mistaken this for a good deed, and Sherlock realizes that's acceptable, too.

John disappears into his room, and Sherlock washes the dishes methodically, one-by-one, until they are impeccable and gleaming on the dish rack. He's good at dishes, on the other hand. There's a universality to sparkling clean glassware. He may be _untidy_, but that doesn't mean bad hygiene. No one expects too much of Sherlock when it comes down to washing dishes, which is why he finds it relaxing.

If something in the oven smells like it's burning, John tactfully doesn't mention it. He calmly pops cake two, plan B in the place of the first, and Sherlock wonders if there's anything to the burn rate of egg-cream-sugar-flour-chocolate mixes.

Sally says the cake is delicious.

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><p><strong>Hello all! This is my first published foray into the Sherlock BBC fanverse. I'm currently doing the 100 themes challenge (every other theme is a Sherlock prompt in my head, just because it's nearly all I can think about these days), and it's a lovely way to get to know the characters while I'm working on a full-length fic that will be published in the very distant future.<strong>

**Anyone interested in knowing more about the author is welcome to visit her profile page. **

**Questions comments and feedback are welcomed and encouraged.**

**Lily**


	2. Rivalry

**Rating went up for mention of alcohol overdose and character death. You've been warned.**

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><p><strong>2. Rivalry<strong>

Before he had even begun to mount the stairs, John found his ears assaulted with such an offensive crescendo of soprano violin, in very rough harmony with a man's angry, raised voice that he almost didn't dare to go up. Mrs Hudson hovered anxiously at his elbow, patting his arm nervously and warbling things like, "They've been at it for an hour now," and, "wouldn't even come down for tea!"

"It's alright, Mrs H," said John, hoping fervently that his smile was more of the reassuring type, and less the Mycroft-Holmes-had-better-damn-well-hope-he-locked-my-gun-away-because-if-not-I-will-bloody-well-shoot-him variety he'd grown to know too well since taking the spare bedroom upstairs. "I'll sort them out."

They were worse than three-year-olds. John stomped up each step vindictively, like it had personally insulted him. Between the most powerful man in England and the cleverest man on Earth, one would think the two could have found a way to work around their "petty feud" by now.

Anthea sat at the top step with her back to the door, the only sign of her unprofessional frustration the sound-cancelling headphones stuffed into her ears. John glared at her as if to say, _Why the hell aren't you helping anything?_ to which Anthea replied with a practised shrug and a masterful eye roll. She did scoot aside to give him room to pass through, and John was too distracted by the sudden volley of thumping from inside to remember to trod reproachfully on her fingers.

Once he crossed the threshold, the sitting room fell dead silent. Two pairs of wary eyes tracked his every step as he came slowly closer, taking in the scene. Mycroft stood in the centre of the carpet, his grip so tight on the umbrella that it didn't take Sherlock Holmes' brain to deduce where exactly the thumping had come from. Lestrade held Sherlock's bow, and was quite red in the face. Now that John thought of it, Lestrade was the most likely to be yelling, out of the two of them: between Sherlock and Mycroft, Sherlock would be the one raising his voice, but seeing as he'd been massacring the violin, that clearly wasn't the case today. Sherlock was folded sulkily into his armchair, cradling the violin to him, very carefully not meeting John's eyes.

"Do I want to know?" John made for the kitchen with the groceries, since the three of them were likely a knot too complicated for him to untangle right now. He didn't hear Mycroft creep in behind him until the umbrella was blocking his path to the refrigerator.

"Doctor Watson."

"Yeah." John contemplated the umbrella for a moment. "Can I help you?"

"He can't, John." Sherlock stood suddenly between the two of them, violin abandoned, the line of his body taut and tight like a bow. "Really, he can't."

John found himself eye-level with Sherlock's shoulder blades, and heaved a sigh. He would leave the two of them to it – keeping the ice cream from melting seemed like a much higher priority.

"Sherlock, I beg of you." The umbrella clicked anxiously on the tile floor. John ignored it, ignored the margarine tub full of what seemed to be small intestine, ignored the way Lestrade's entrance into the crowded room was like a stampede of rhinos in comparison to the two brothers. "It's a question of common decency –"

"And I agree with him, for once." Lestrade leaned in the door frame and leered at the rest of them.

"There's a difference between common decency and professionalism." Sherlock stood under the sharp overhead light, nearly cornered against the kitchen table full of ominous, glittering beakers and dangerous-looking equipment. He was rigid and erect, and lacked all his usual fluidity, and John thought wildly that it seemed Sherlock was the oddity on the lab table for once, under Lestrade and Mycroft's sceptical glares. The tall man avoided eye contact, and gently pushed a Petri dish full of liver out of the way of his elbow. "Please."

For a moment, the kitchen was so silent that they could clearly hear the grandfather clock Sherlock had dragged home one night, muttering something about "Payment," and, "Would have been rude to refuse," ticking away in the sitting room. John grudgingly slammed the fridge door shut – it would probably be for the best if Lestrade didn't see half of what was in there, in any case – and turned his gaze to Mycroft, who seemed likely to be the most reasonable of the three in these sorts of situation.

Reasonable being, here, a word used most lightly indeed.

"Maybe you'd like to share, for those of us who are less enlightened?"

Lestrade's walkie-talkie crackled to life, but they all ignored it.

"John, there's, ah." Mycroft scuffed the toe of his Very Expensive Loafers across the floor, looking genuinely uncomfortable instead of at John, or at Sherlock, who was pinching the bridge of his nose quite hard. The ring on his hand glinted shiny in the absolute mess of the kitchen.

"There's been an accident," said Lestrade, rubbing his jaw.

"So you... want Sherlock to go out and take a look," said John slowly.

Sherlock looked like he could have kissed him. Lestrade frowned and said, "No."

"No?"

"No!" Sherlock's eyes roamed the room as if searching for some sort of distraction. "G, please, I'm sorry, but a little discretion, please, given the circumstances?" His gaze paused on John, who thought that he looked like a bit of a madman, actually.

"Anderson was wrong about you," said Lestrade. "_You_ were wrong about you, Sherlock: there's a heart in you after all –"

Which was exactly the wrong thing to say after Moriarty, but John bit back a clever retort because there was no way Lestrade could possibly have known. He turned to Mycroft, instead, and said, "Is it someone I know?" Words that he'd always hated in Afghanistan.

"I'm afraid so," said Mycroft gravely. The kitchen fell once again silent, then Sherlock groaned, and Mycroft twirled his umbrella, and added, "John, your sister Harriet –"

The walls may have started spinning a bit at that point, but if John gripped the handle of the fridge tightly to keep from sliding to the floor, the other three were tactful enough not to say anything.

"Harry?"

Three grim faces confirmed.

He could have been sick. "She was the one responsible, wasn't she? _Had she been drinking_?" When no one would answer: "_Mycroft!_"

Mycroft pulled out his slim diary and glanced down, his face twisted with distaste. "I believe her blood alcohol content was zero point two percent, Doctor Watson," he said dryly.

"Is – she –?"

"At the A&E, John," said Lestrade gently. "But they don't think that –"

Well, no. Of course they wouldn't. Sherlock looked very lost under the bright overhead light.

"I'm sorry, John," he said awkwardly. "I thought, if they didn't tell you, maybe –"

"I need to see her."

"But –"

This was panic, being unable to breathe, knots in his stomach, hands perfectly steady. This was the stuff of nightmares – not the horrid war nightmares, but the ones in which he'd let his parents down and let Harry out of his sight. He'd sworn to himself when he was seventeen never to let anything like this happen, and _where_ had he been? Not talking to Harry, because they'd had a row.

This was not the time to explain human behaviour to Sherlock.

"_Now_."

"I have a car waiting outside," Mycroft said delicately.

..

The day of the funeral, it rained. Sherlock huddled close to John under the umbrella, under the pine trees, and they watched quietly together as the drops of water splashed off the shiny surface of the new headstone. Everyone else had gone, save Clara, who stood off to the distance on her own. She hadn't said a word to anyone all day, except to thank John for coming.

"Are you angry with me?" Sherlock said abruptly.

John watched Clara wipe the rain from her cheeks, and bit his lip. "No."

"We could have got to the hospital faster if I hadn't tried to –"

They hadn't made it to the hospital in time to say goodbye. Harry's last memory of John would be their row. John looked at the rain-slick headstone thoughtfully.

"Or are you still angry with _her_? I know you two didn't get along." Sherlock stood so close that he was practically murmuring in John's ear. John could feel Sherlock's breath on the back of his neck, and there was something warm and comfortable about it. He turned his face up to smile wanly at his flatmate

"Neither."

"I don't understand." Eyebrows scrunched over mother-of-pearl eyes, which were hazy with confusion. The words sounded so absurd out of Sherlock's mouth that John had to laugh. "You were furious with Harry for her drinking."

And if John was being honest, the touch of anger still wasn't quite gone from his heart, and it hurt, of course it hurt. But there was so much more to it than that. "She's still my sister."

Sherlock's brows hunched lower.

"If Mycroft were in an accident, you would want to know, wouldn't you?"

"Of course, I would. Don't be absurd, John."

"Well. There you have it."

"Have what?"

"You and Mycroft don't get on. Harry and me don't – didn't either. But there's a point, Sherlock, when you have to look beyond that."

"Blood is thicker than water."

"Exactly." John tried to smile encouragingly; it probably came out as more of a grimace.

"I had thought that you wouldn't want to know about the accident. I thought it would make you angrier."

It had been a very valiant, albeit misguided – it had been a very _Sherlock _thing to do. It even ended with his _humans are strange _face that John could not help but to find endearing.

"It was very thoughtful of you." He paused. "Are you sure it wasn't just to annoy Mycroft?"

Sherlock smirked and linked his arm through John's. "Let's go home, shall we?"

John let him lead him away.

..

Mycroft received an anonymous shipment of new umbrellas the following week. He sent the thank you note to John Watson.

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><p><strong>Thanks to all of you for reading. Sorry for the delay. Should be faster next time.<strong>

**~Lily**


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